Rip-off of the Season
Posted on 23. Dec, 2006 by Stuart in News
I was intrigued by an advert being shown via Google’s Adsense as the Soulmate Calculator. It promises to reveal your perfect soulmate’s first name after asking a few simple questions.
It’s all very harmless until you get to this screen.
The calculator asks for your first name and then it has a checkbox that needs to be clicked stating that you “Agree to Our Terms”. The problem is that it doesn’t disclose their terms anywhere at all. And if you don’t check the box you can’t progress forward.
If you do check the box you’re taken to another screen asking for your mobile phone number so that they can text you your soulmate’s name.
Isn’t there legislation outlawing this practice?
Who knows what these terms may imply but I’m guessing that it has something to do with agreeing that this company can continue you to send you names until you text back “Stop sending me the names, please” with the correct syntax. And they’re probably charging you $5.50 for the privilege.
So, my only answer to this outlandish advertising is to make them pay for it. Any time you see this horrid advert – it kept coming up for me at StatCounter – make sure you click it so they pay for some wasted advertising.
And, if possible inform as many others so that this company gets a ton of bad press – [No linking to their site, please!]
I just wanted to post because I got ripped off by this site! However… I came across your article and then did a search to find the site and go back to it. Now that I’ve gone back to it I’ve found that they DO show the terms and conditions if you just scroll down. It is misleading because when you have to check the box for terms and conditions, you THINK that you should be able to click on the words “terms and conditions” to see what the terms are… but when there is no link there, you give up and just go on without even looking down below.